Updated: Housing Situation Affecting Budapest "Is Unsustainable"
- 28 Jan 2025 9:05 AM
![Updated: Housing Situation Affecting Budapest "Is Unsustainable" Updated: Housing Situation Affecting Budapest "Is Unsustainable"](/binaries/content/gallery/2024-photos/property/08/block-of-flats-hungary.jpg/block-of-flats-hungary.jpg/xpatloop%3Achannelslarge)
In a letter to the prime minister, the mayor said the housing crisis was an acute challenge. In a post on Facebook, Karacsony noted housing price and rent increases now outstripped growth in household incomes.
He said Budapest had proposals and specific schemes at the ready, worked out in cooperation with the staff of the European Commission and a government body, to ensure the provision of affordable rental accommodation and to convert underused publicly owned buildings into housing, which he called the biggest housing scheme of the past decades.
The 20 billion forint programme, he added, would be implemented once the government "finally publishes" the related tenders so that Budapest can access related EU funding.
"I am ready to negotiate ... in order to solve the housing crisis in Budapest," Karacsony said.
Budapest mayor: City wants affordable suburban housing in Rakosrendezo
Budapest needs affordable suburban homes built "in a transparent way" in the city's Rakosrendezo development area, Gergely Karacsony, the city's mayor, said in response to a statement by a government official on Monday.
Botond Sara, the head of the government office, said in a video posted on social media that the Budapest assembly "is facing perhaps the biggest decisions of its life". "The councillors are set to decide whether to prevent the construction of apartments and jobs or support a development project which will yield money that could be used for developing the city's public transport system developments and keeping the city clean," said Sara.
Karacsony said in response that "it is becoming clearer and clearer that this is not a large-scale development project but a 'back-door deal' of the government," adding that the project which he dubbed "mini Dubai" was aimed at building luxury apartments for foreigners rather than affordable housing for locals.
The mayor said the metropolitan council wanted to ensure affordable housing with plenty of green spaces in the Rakosrendezo area, "with the involvement of investors ... in a transparent way, not in back-door dealings with Arab billionaires, but in competition, serving our sovereignty and Budapest residents."
The Rakosrendezo brownfield area is in north-eastern Budapest's 14th district, which is subject to conflicting development plans by the government and the municipality,
Concerning Prime Minister Viktor Orban's upcoming visit to the United Arab Emirates, Karacsony said "if the prime minister represents Hungary ... he will be obliged to tell his business partners that the shady mini-Dubai project is off the table."
He said the "scandalous" purchase agreement of the project site and the prime minister's visit were just a few days apart, adding "but this is mere coincidence, what else could it be?"
Karacsony pledged to "preserve Budapest's sovereignty and its gold reserves" and he suggested that "the prime minister could inform his business partners and watch the city council's Wednesday meeting online".
Karacsony has said that Budapest enjoys pre-emption rights over the entire Rakosrendezo area, insisting that the legal situation was "clear and unequivocal".
Later on Monday, Karacsony said the state had sent the capital's Budapesti Kozmuvek company a call to exercise its right of pre-emption for the entire Rakosrendezo area.
In a Facebook post, he said the "smart-aleck" government had been "talking nonsense in recent days" regarding the pre-emption rights are whether they existed or not.
"We will exercise out right of pre-emption and Rakosrendezo will become Park City instead of a mini-Dubai," he added.
Fidesz councillor: Budapest suffering from housing crisis
Budapest is suffering from a housing crisis and the mayor of Budapest bears responsibility for it, Alexandra Szentkiralyi, Fidesz's group leader in the Budapest Assembly, said on Facebook on Tuesday.
In his manifesto five years ago, Gergely Karacsony promised to build subsidised housing and student dormitories, "and he had a series of other fake plans that came to nothing," Szentkiralyi said.
The "thousands of billions" spent in the city, she added, had yielded "zero affordable rentals or dorms", and the municipality's housing agency had only managed to rent out three flats.
"Karacsony and his team are trying to sweep their total housing failure under the carpet, but they are the ones leading this city. Naturally, they are expecting solutions from the government, and now that the government has had enough of their inactivity, City Hall has started to panic," she said.
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